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Linking on the links in Atlanta

Friday, February 20th, 2009

On a lighter note, I managed to play a round of golf when I was in Atlanta last week. I went down a day early to try to arrange some meetings with prospective clients for the firm. That didn’t work out, so I had time to play golf. (Okay, so maybe I didn’t try all [...]

Debris in All Directions

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin’ now.
Is it a prepaid surprise, or C.O.D.?
The Music Man
Lyric by Meredith Willson
1957
The Wells Fargo Wagon is beginning to look like a train wreck in all directions.
Meeting professionals have been hearing all about the pushback Wells Fargo ran into, in the media and in the U.S. Congress, until it [...]

How Incentives Can Change the World (And How the World Can Change Incentives)

Friday, February 13th, 2009

ATLANTA – A tantalizing question is emerging from the raging debate over incentive meetings, employee retreats, and the appropriate use of U.S. government bailout dollars:
Can the principles and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) help reassert the legitimacy of meetings, the industry that plans them, and the client organizations that are now weighing whether to [...]

Now It’s Up to All of Us

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

ATLANTA – In the nearly 12 years that I’ve been a member of Meeting Professionals International (MPI), I have never seen our industry so angry, energized, and ready to argue the value and business results of a well-orchestrated meeting.
As my mother might have said, in a reasonable imitation of some of our earlier-generation relatives: “Dahlink, [...]

First, Do No Harm

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Some of the most transcendent moments I’ve seen onsite have taken place in carefully controlled settings, where every aspect of a meeting was engineered to get people talking to each other. And listening across the boundaries of language, culture, agenda, and organizational loyalties.
As meeting professionals, we don’t often talk about the incredible convening power that [...]

What happens between before and after?

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

I (and thousands of other commuters) have been mightily inconvenienced by the strike that has shut down Ottawa’s public transit system for nearly two months. The strike seems to be (finally) at an end, but it will be several weeks before all of the buses are back on the road.
These days, I find myself thinking [...]

World AIDS Day and the Ultimate ROI

Monday, December 1st, 2008

When it comes to assessing the return on investment (ROI) in large, face-to-face meetings, it’s hard to think of a more basic measure than 3.8 million years of life.
With the approach of World AIDS Day December 1, the Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative issued a verdict of sorts on the AIDS policies pursued [...]

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